The World's Only Corn Palace

South Dakota is a beautiful state and it is the land of cattle, black hills gold and the World's Only Corn Palace.

The World's Only Corn Palace...another sign along the freeway....another opportunity to see something unique. The original corn palace was built in 1892 and it has been going steadily since then. Each year the exterior of the building is re-done. The building has a facade made of corn cobs and there are mosaic-like pictures decorating the outside of the building and inside the building where there is a sports arena and all kinds of corn products. Popcorn, corn on the cob, corn dogs...you name it.

Cornelius is the Corn Palace mascot....another photo opportunity! This was a fun stop and if you are ever in the area and have the time....go for it!!

Another thing we found interesting was to see that candy cigarettes are still sold in South Dakota, and there are so many different packages....just like the real thing. I remember loving the candy cigarettes when I was little, but haven't thought about them or seen them for sale in years.

Spam, Spam and More Spam

Spam...not the garbage e-mails that we all get....but the canned meat product that has made by Hormel since 1937....

I'll bet that most of us never knew that there was such a thing as the Spam Museum, built to document the history of Spam!! Well, when driving down the road in Minnesota, we couldn't resist taking the turnoff to see what it was.

We had a great time. Mom said "I guess we never know what we will be doing!". The "wall of Spam" inside the museum is made from more than 3300 cans. We had our picture taken with Spammy and watched the movie "Spam - A Love Story" in the museum theatre. The museum even had a letter from General Eisenhower, expressing his thanks for the product that was enjoyed by our servicemen.

One of the displays showed George Burns and Gracie Allen who promoted the product of their sponsor on their radio show. And, we saw a video of the Spamettes who sang about the wonders of Spam (among other songs). All of certainly wished that we could have worn those costumes...which included pointed hats...kind of like a princess hats, but not nearly as nice!

The Spam gift store had every possible Spam product, including 8 varieties of Spam....who knew there were so many?? I've never seen some of these in a grocery store (like Spam with Bacon)..perhaps we could special order it??

Baby, Pets, Antiquing and Uncle Ole's Purple Heart

The newest Elgin family member is Aidan...my cousin, Lisa's grandson. Some of the Elgin pets are featured here....Scrappy with Paul, Mom W with Snickers (longest eyelashes ever!!), and Pumpkin, the cat.

One of the pictures we had to take in Elgin was little Cubby in a Cubs hat that Aunt Marlene's cement goose was wearing. (Cement geese are decorator items that are fully-sized geese statues and there are all kinds of outfits that can be purchased for them, like seasonal outfits, or specialty outfits....such as a little Chicago Cubs suit.) Aunt Marlene's goose was wearing a complete Cubs outfit, but we thought it was pushing things just to get the hat on Cubby....so we waited until he was very, very tired. (Cubby, if you haven't already guessed, was named after the Chicago Cubs. Dad and many of my Elgin family are big Cub fans, even though the Cubs haven't had the best of luck in the last 100+ years where the World Series is concerned.)

When we were in Elgin we had some great times out and about with Aunt Audrey and Angela (my cousin). We had lunch and browsed for antiques in a couple of different towns in Illinois as well as a town in Wisconsin. One of our lunches was in Rockford, Il and the restaurant had some interesting antique decorations, including the Speakeasy Bar that came from a Chicago hotel that was owned by Bugsy Moran. And, of course, Mom was drawn to some of the hats that were in one of the stores...she especially liked the gold hat that had a matching purse. A very flashy gold color for sure, too bad we couldn't find little white gloves to wear along with them.

Dad wanted some pictures that told of Uncle Ole's military career. He was awarded the purple heart after being wounded in action in Korea. Angela put together a collage of various military souvenirs (including the purple heart). My cousin Brian's wife, Robin, put together a memory book as a surprise for Uncle Ole a few years ago. Uncle Ole's Mom had saved so many things from when her son was in the service, including letters that her son sent her from overseas, the telegram that told of his being wounded in action and the letter advising of his purple heart recommendation. Robin did a great job on the book and it was fun to look at. What a great surprise for my uncle and how wonderful that his Mom saved all of those things for him. I had never seen a purple heart before...interesting!

Elgin Family

Dad, Mom and I went to see my great-aunt Evelyn while in South Elgin. It was a wonderful visit. She's 97 years old and is such a lovely lady. Her 2 sons, Stan and Phil, were there as well.

Attached are some pictures of our Elgin Family. There's a picture of Mom, Aunt Marlene and me. Also pictures of the family at a buffet that Aunt Marlene arranged and treated all of us to.

Elgin Family....We love all of you and really thank all of you for the great visit. Lots and lots of great food and love in the Elgin area!!

Elgin, the Casino, Barbies and Cacti

We had a great time visiting our Elgin family, including Aunt Marlene, Aunt Audrey, Uncle Ole and all of my many cousins. Aunt Marlene took us on a tour of South Elgin to see the house that my family lived in before we moved from Illinois to California in 1960. We saw many places that were a big part of our family history, including the house that Dad's parents lived in for so many years. We also went to the cemetery to lay some flowers on the graves of our family members, including Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Monica, Aunt Virgene and Uncle George. That was sad, but Dad and I were very glad that we had the opportunity to pay our respects.

I've included a couple of family photos and will put more on later. One is Dad with his 2 sisters, my Aunt Marlene and Aunt Audrey. There's also a picture of Aunt Audrey and Uncle Ole and a picture of Uncle Ole with his sons Brian and Keith.

All of our family has really fond memories of Grandma & Grandpa Reinert's house where we had so many family gatherings over the years. When we were in front of our Prarie St house in South Elgin, the current owner drove up and offered to let us take a look inside. I took a picture of the outside of the house and also a picture looking down the stairs...do you remember how it looked, Doug, Mike & Jo???? The house has changed quite a bit over the years. There was a large family room added onto the side of the house where the screened-in porch used to be. Above the family room is now a large master bedroom. The yard is still quite large, even with the additions, but the grape vine is no longer there and the outdoor fireplace is gone as well. The attached garage burned down several years ago and there is a free standing garage now. The current owners did not know about the fire. Dad told them that the house fire started when the then-owner tried to thaw out frozen pipes with a blow torch. Dad also told them that he had thawed out pipes the same way himself, but fortunately, there were no fires when we lived there. I peeked into the bedroom that Jo and I shared way back when and also looked at the upstairs bathtub where we used to have our baths when we were young. Hard to believe that was 50 years ago. (Note to my brothers and sister...Remember the Dairy Prince, where Aunt Marlene used to take us for ice cream treats (thank you Aunt Marlene), well, it is now a Wee Dee's, with some very gaudy paint on the building, I might add.)

My cousin, Brian and his wife Robin, invited all of us for a cookout at their house in Elgin. We saw their 2 dalmations, Blue and Chase. Blue has one brown eye and one blue eye....hence the name. Robin and Brian have a couple of interesting collections in their home. Robin has over 500 Barbie dolls. I would never have guessed that there were that many, but according to Robin, there are lots more than that. They also have a few cactus plants. None of us has ever seen such large cacti in any home. You'll see in the picture just how tall they are!! I think Robin said that she's had them for 20 years....and, they have just kept getting bigger and bigger. Pretty soon they will need to cut a hole in the living room ceiling to allow the plants to continue to get taller!!

Aunt Marlene, Dad, Mom and I took an overnight trip up to the Ho-Chunk Casino in Wisconsin. En route to the casino, we met up with my cousin, Kathe, who lives in Madison, WI. We had a nice lunch and visit. Kathe is so much fun to be with. I was glad that Mom W had the chance to meet her and Aunt Marlene hasn't seen Kathe since she was a very young girl. I'm glad that our lunch worked out. At the casino, we had very nice and comfortable rooms. The casino had an indoor waterfall, which was fun to look at. As for gaming, none of us won any money, but we had fun. Dad tried to hitchhike home, but had no success in getting a ride. I wonder why?? Outside the casino were some "rocks". I suggested that Mom try rock climbing, but she thought I'd have better luck! We had fun, but missed little Cubby.....Cubby spent the night with Aunt Audrey, Uncle Ole and Snickers....a beautiful cocker spaniel with the longest eye lashes I've ever seen. He's a sweet dog and the two "cousins" seemed to have a good tail-wagging time. Cubby slept right near Aunt Audrey....he knows a dog lover when he sees one. Uncle Ole said that he was a very good guest.... Thanks for dog sitting, Aunt Audrey & Uncle Ole.